Читать книгу The Form Within - Karl H Pribram - Страница 11

1 The Prologue and Preface of The Form Within have stressed that we are experiencing a period of revolution in science akin to that which shaped our views during the Copernican revolution. We humans are reasserting the centrality of our viewpoints and our responsibility toward the environment within which we are housed.

2 This reassessment of our centrality can be formulated in terms of a neglect of a science based on pattern that has resulted in a science based on matter, an overarching materialism.

3 Form deals with the essence of what is being observed, not only its matter. Form comes in two flavors: form as shape and form as pattern.

4 Current science, especially the brain and behavioral sciences, has been comfortable with explanations in terms of form as the shapes of matter. But contemporary science is only rarely concerned with form as patterns.

5 The distinction between form as shape and form as pattern is already apparent in Greek philosophy. Euclid’s geometry, as taught in our high schools, uses descriptions of form as shapes. Pythagoreans have dealt with patterns of numbers that describe wave-forms, angles and circles, as in tonal scales and in trigonometry.

6 In The Form Within, when appropriate, I trace these two different formulations of research and theory development in the brain/behavior/experience sciences.

7 Within this context, I develop the theme that the brain/behavior/mind relationship receives a major new explanatory thrust based on the observed biological imperative toward self-organization.